A Name To Every Fixed Star
by whitelilly0989
Summary: Ryan/Taylor. It's a postfinale fic. I have no summary for this one lol. So just read inside and you'll see what I wrote. It's a one-shot.


**Author's Note: **_Hey! Are you shocked? I update Show me What true love is, and I also write this, that happens to be a one shot! And a little of TBR too! Yay!_

_So, I wrote this in the blink of an eye really. I'd had this story on my mind for a while now, because, to let you in on a little secret, it's is kind of based on a real experience. Lol. So if it's pointless… it's because it wasn't meant to have a point. I'm always looking for Titles that have a nice ring for my stories, and I there's a quote by good ol' Bill that I've always liked… so that's why I chose this one. It doesn't have much to do with the story itself, but it is kind of thrown in the mix. _

_Also, the ending's kind of fluffy, I'm sorry, but it is what flowed. Just… be thankful that it is… once again… NOT ANGST lol. _

_Unbeta'd once more. Hope you guys like it. _

_Now, off you go._

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**Dedication: **_To CiCi… my beautiful property! Hope you like this honey bunch!_

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"**A Name to Every Fixed Star"**

_"This Earthly Godfather's of Heaven's lights, that give a name to every fixed star, have no more profit of their shining nights, than those that walk and know not what they are"_

--William Shakespeare.

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He drew out a long sigh as he ran a hand through his face in an effort to clear his mind. He'd opened the door of the apartment for her and she'd stormed inside, huge tidal waves of contempt exuding from her skin.

He closed the door behind him and turned around, his eyes all tired and worn out and his mind still trying to figure out why the hell she'd been giving him the cold shoulder during half of the night, and still… he was coming up empty handed. He'd scanned his brain for all sorts of possibilities… Maybe she hadn't liked the place? Maybe now that she was used to all that crap about European cuisine she found Californian restaurants a little beneath her? Or maybe he'd said something bad and she was overacting. God knew Taylor Townsend could overact about the smallest of things.

But still, the way she was looking at him, hand on her hips, eyes a bit narrowed, her mouth having that slight twitch about it that separated her expression from pouting and biting her lower lip, eyebrows high up on her forehead that seem to read _'so… aren't you giving me an explanation?'_, led him to believe that she was mad; and… overacting or not, Taylor Townsend was scary when she was mad... The woman was a bulldozer.

He looked back at her, fire flaming just behind the irises, and he found himself swallowing unwillingly, both at how amazingly hot she looked like whenever she was mad and at the fact that she was standing in the center of his dorm room, with a lot of sharp things within arms reach and she looked like she was about to start throwing them at him if the wrong buttons were pushed. And not that she wasn't hot… but the latter was kind of intimidating.

So his survival instinct told him to move… He knew she sucked at aiming, so, as long as he moved, he was safe.

He threw the keys in the table by the door as he ran his hand again across his face and headed to the bathroom, and as soon as he gave the smallest of steps, he heard a soft gasp coming from the dark blonde still standing immobile in the same place.

Oh-Oh.

"_So you have nothing to tell me?"_ her tone was demanding and filled with indignity. He raised his head to look at her, and she'd taken a step forward, leaning against the table that had a pretty porcelain vase that Kirsten had insisted in buying for him. He'd told her that she didn't have to buy a porcelain vase for his dorm because… really… he really didn't care how his room looked like just as long as it was clean, but Kirsten wouldn't take no for an answer. And now… Taylor's hand was suspiciously near it… He needed to figure out what the hell was going on in that crazy mind of hers right away, or he wouldn't live to tell it.

He began replaying the day in his head… he'd gone to pick her up at the airport that morning now that she was on break from the Sorbonne, they'd spent most of the afternoon inside this same dorm room catching up with lost sex time, they'd decided to go outside and eat… while they waited on a meteor shower that was supposed to be a very nice thing to look at outside, and next thing he knows, she's not speaking to him, forgetting completely about the meteor shower _she'd_ suggested they'd see and storming back to his dorm without saying another word. And judging from her creased frown and narrowed eyes, she didn't even want to be within five feet of him.

She inhaled a deep breath once more, this time in shock and still emanating angry vibes he assumed because he hadn't said a thing… _"Ok… I am so going back to France!"_

Okay what?

Right, non-verbalism always pissed her off… _'Well played, Atwood'_

He watched as she went frantically to the other room and began grabbing her suitcase and it almost took him a minute to react. This night was turning out to be so confusing!

"_Whoa, Whoa… Hey… Taylor"_ he went over to where she was and began struggling to gain her attention. She was mumbling stuff to herself and he thought it couldn't actually be good…

"_Good God, I should've__ seen it coming! I am such an idiot!"_

"_Taylor… Taylor… Taylor… TAYLOR! Stop!!"_ it wasn't until he screamed her name that she stopped trying to drag out the suitcase out of the room.

She breathed in sharply trying to mask her startle and then proceeded, in the Taylor fashion, with another ramble.

"_So what if I don't? Huh? What if I don't stop and continue taking out my very shiny purple luggage with me out of this room and out of your life for good Ryan? What will happen then? Oh I know! You sure as hell won't even dwell about losing me because you already have a line of…__ whatever the name of the Berkley version of the Newpsies is, waiting for a hook up!"_

What the hell had she said? If there had been a doubt in his mind about her blowing something out of proportion, it had been washed away that instant.

"_WHAT?,"_ was his instant answer.

"_You know what I'm talking about!"_ her hands were shaking and this looked more like an irrational freak out than a healthy argument… and somehow in the back of his head he knew that, but it still made him a little angry… from where was she getting this kind of thoughts?

"_Oh, believe me, I have no idea what you're talking about__"_ he said and it came out too sarcastically. Apparently speaking to Seth on the phone this past year had begun taking an effect on him.

"_You think this is funny?!"_ Her tone was reaching octaves he'd never heard before and for a second he thought it was… but then she moved and her hand came to rest on the vase, and he was positively sure that she was going to throw it. Not so funny anymore. _"Ok, I'm out of here!"_

She began rolling the suitcase; even if it was a little heavier for her, she looked very determined to go away instantly if he didn't do something. So he had to do _something. Anything. _

He wasn't sure if the right words would come out of his mouth to make her stop leaving, and he was sure that kissing her would most likely leave him without the possibility to have any children with the state she was in now, but still… he had to figure out what the hell was making her so upset. So, he did it the only way he knew how… acting.

He put his body in between her and the door and began moving from one side to the next as she tried to evade him. _"Okay, Taylor, I'm sorry! Can you please just tell me what the hell is going on?"_

"_Move!"_ he could've sworn he saw the same shade of brown Summer's eyes turned into when she was having a rage blackout sparkle in Taylor's eyes.

"_You are acting completely crazy!"_ he shouted back. She was acting delusional, and he was sure this was probably just a small thing that she was blowing completely out of proportion… like the one time they'd realized she liked Pepsi and he was a Coke kind of guy, and how that resembled on their kids future – whatever that meant. Disaster.

"_That's because I AM!"_ she retorted. Well, that was an argument you couldn't fight against.

"_At least I'm glad you noticed!"_ he was beginning to match her voice in frustration and anger.

Her jaw opened to make a gasp and he felt a yell trying to make an entrance. Instead, she settled back down and covered her face with the fake politeness from before. Crap.

"_I notice a lot of things, you… smartass! Such as, the way you were flirting with every single one of those girls we found on Campus!__ 'Hey Ryan'" _she made her tone sound baby-ish and then heavier to mimic his voice _"'Oh hey Darla how's it going?'"_ she switched to her normal voice _"You were spreading all the charm with me right then and there!"_

Oh God, he didn't know if to laugh or… what. So this was the thing she was blowing out of proportion? The fact that he had girl friends here? 'Cause that was all they were, friends who happened to be girls. After she'd left for France and he'd went to Berkley, he and Taylor had never agreed on an official relationship but he still knew that once she came back, he would be with her; not because he believed in destiny and all that stuff, or because he was Shakespearian-ly-I-want-to-write-a-poem-in-love with her (he'd already done one, so that was enough), but because that was what he wanted. He hadn't seen the reason to start something with another girl when he knew she would come back, when he knew she would try to meddle her way into his life somehow… so he'd thought it was best to save her the trouble this time around… He couldn't possibly believe that she thought that by greeting someone, he was hitting on the girl!

"_That's her name!!"_ he threw his hands up in the air, something he _never_ did.

"_Okay fine, whatever"_ she waved a hand as she moved her head to emphasize her point and a bang fell on her eyes. _"I'll give you another one: We're going inside the restaurant and this bleach-blonde plastic girl comes in and says hi and you say… 'Oh, Hey Trixie'"_ she made her voice deeper to mimic his again _"which by the way, who the hell calls a blonde girl Trixie? 'This is my… girl…she's my… Taylor?'"_

Oh crap, he'd blocked that out of his memory. He hadn't meant to say that like that… it was just that they hadn't actually talked about the whole 'g' word in the short hours she'd been there… and he didn't want to say something if he didn't know where they stood. Basic Atwood move. But still… making her name a question was kind of… not good.

"_This is my… girl…she's my… Taylor?"_ she mimicked his voice just like he'd said it two hours before _"I mean, seriously?? I come all the way down here from France and I'm your girl… oh no! Wait… I'm your 'Taylor?' with a question mark because apparently the stress sounds funny like that!"_

She was wiggling her head as she spoke, this was going to be long if he didn't fix it soon.

"_Okay, I can explain that one"_ he didn't scream and he held his hands in front of him as a sign of surrender.

"_Sure you can, you didn't want to tell all your pretty friends that you had a pseudo-distance relationship with a multi-lingual nutjob, so you could dump me __easily and have a chance with them once I'm gone, Which is what I'm doing!"_ she screamed the last part.

It still made him mad though, that she would think so little of him; the part where he didn't 'dare to tell everyone she was his girlfriend because he didn't want to scare the potential girlfriends off'? That was the farthest from the truth she'd ever been at reading him. He wasn't like that… and she should've known that. Did she honestly think that he'd gone to the airport that morning, and had been with her during all day just to have what? An international booty call?

Truth is that he would've wanted to say 'You know what? She's my girlfriend', there was no harm in that. Back a year ago, with Marissa's death and all, he'd had to take a little time into getting used to calling someone else his girlfriend… but it had never been because of Taylor, (okay, maybe a little, given her weird ways)… that had been his own issue to deal with. If Marissa hadn't died and Taylor would've still been in the picture, it would've taken him less time to admit to a relationship with her. And now that he knew how amazingly special she could be? If he could, he'd shout over the rooftops her name until she got tired of hearing it.

But he couldn't have done it, he needed to know where they stood first and then he could do all those sort of things. And she should've known that. It made him mad that she didn't.

"_Not only is that insulting, but it's just completely unreasonable"_

She lowered her head and for the first time, he noticed she was avoiding eye contact with him and seemed genuinely hurt. She'd honestly thought he was hitting on other girls… Unbelievable… but then again, it was Taylor.

She was crazy, but she was hurting because of her own psychosis.

"_I never said I was reasonable Ryan"_ again with the tough bravado trying to make it seem like it wasn't getting to her. _"Maybe that's another reason why you want to cut it out with me"_

"_Okay… that's it"_ he raised a finger at her as he began pacing around the room looking for something _"That's it… that's freaking it"_

He grabbed her by the wrist and began dragging her to the room, as he began to look inside the drawers of his desk and found a sparkly pair of ball pens.

"_What are you doing?"_ she asked confused.

"_What color do you want?"_ he showed her a blue pen and a red one.

"_I don't know… Red?"_ she said still confused, his hand still on her wrist.

"_Red it is"_ he said back.

"_What are you doing? Are you about to stab me with the red pen or something?"_

"_Taylor… don't take it personally but just stop talking nonsense"_

"_How am I supposed to not take that personally? You've called me crazy; you haven't even denied that you were flirt-_

And she instantly shut up.

He raised his left palm and put it in front of her eyes so she would have no option but to look at the red ink marking the white skin of his hand. Around the edges of the letters, there was pink… the trace that the pressure of the pen had left when he'd drawn the words, his particular handwriting shining brightly and the smell of the ink to close to her nose.

"_I'm Taylor Townsend's"_

She felt a smile making its way around her lips, and her cheeks began flushing a scarlet shade of red.

"_Why did you do that for?"_ she asked bewildered. _"Ryan… you didn't have to-_

"_Apparently I did. Listen… I want to be with you, and… if anything, you being crazy is a pro on that list. I don't care who knows about us… just as long as YOU know this"_ he showed his palm to her again.

She smiled again, so shocked, that she actually didn't say anything else.

She just went near him and threw her arms up on his neck, her soft lips brushing in the slowest of ways as his hands came to rest on her waist and they'd kissed so much, it felt their lips would bleed.

"_Thank you. That's the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me.__"_

"_I can always write it in my forehead, you know?"_ he said and she playfully pushed him away a little, but he held on to her.

"_Oh yeah, that would keep the Berkley-version of the Newpsies away from you"_ she was smiling… _"What would be the name for those?"_

"_I don't __know we'd have to ask Seth"_ he mumbled against her lips as she moaned a little.

He continued kissing her as it seemed like decades flew by. His tongue brushing against hers and their bodies joined together but not moving more than necessary. Enjoying the calmness of each other's arms… all the previous craziness fading away as thousands of stars cascaded in the vast dark nighttime sky, each one of them probably telling their story, they both felt as there was nothing else to explain… nothing else to say, as everything that needed to be said was already drawn in skin and flesh.

"_So you don't mind being with someone who's a total weirdo and a complete lunatic?"_ She asked as his hand entangled itself on her auburn locks while she rested her head against his chest.

"_I have your name on my left hand Taylor… I think you're safe"_

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